The fleeing mass staggers into focus, arriving to the trigger point. The trek has been slow and heavy. Having each been expelled by the rancor of decay, the discharge, which has submerged the places of origin in tarns of hunger, dejection and desolation, they arrive here—to the trigger point—in a synthesis of the worn. As though in one swift, unrestricted instant, the crowd is transformed. The legs, accelerating madly, rhythmically, propel the swarm toward ‘freedom,’ as though there were such a thing. As if the legs and the neurons were operationally schismatic. One believing in the victory of the sprint, the other born only of desperation, sustained only by adrenaline (without panic: this crown remains strong). The hamstrings feed a battering pulse into the ground; the quadriceps thrust the body forward—into ascension. The barrier has been scaled. The mind believes it has won. The corpse knows it must fall back. They are just corpses, in the end. Activated only by a spontaneous generation of life from within the wasted, robbed bowels. Picked off at the climax of this flight, the crowd is broken, returned to individuals, thrown back into the vacuum to pace in wait of the next purge.